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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Concretionary fun

There was a recent article in the Colorado Springs Gazette about fellow paleoblogger Anthony and his adventures in concretion land. As anyone who has ever had the pleasure of identifying fossils for the public we all know for every real fossil someone brings in you usually get a barrel full of concretions that people also brought in. I have found that having separate concretion and fossil examples that you can show to the public helps them to understand what they have and why it is not a dinosaur egg/heart/eye, fish, plesiosaur paddle, turtle, ect......sometimes it is an easy mistake to make, especially when you do not see fossils on a daily basis. Some of these concretions can be pretty cool looking and are interesting rocks/minerals on their own (without needing to pretend to be a fossil). And there are usually some pretty interesting storied that accompany most concretions.

I thought I would share some of the fun items we have in our lab that have been brought in and donated over the years:

Not sure what someone thought this one could be.

A variety of "eggs and/or turtles"

"Its a ceratopsian horn!" - No, its not. Sadly.

And this one is not a concretion, but I threw it in to see if anyone is paying attention. Any guesses on what it is (and there are at least two people out there who better know this):

It's always a little sad to have to tell someone that their "treasure" isn't a fossil. . .particularly if it was handed down for a generation or two. On the other hand, it's also frustrating when you get the person who doesn't believe you when told that that dinosaur egg is "just" a rock!

That one on the lower right in "eggs and/or turtles" would have thrown me, though it's much easier to tell first-hand. I know my invert paleo very, very well, as I took the intro class five times (true story- I despised the prof), but I have no idea what I'm looking at in the last picture.